Happy New Year Everyone!

We need your help!

My collected recaps and reviews of season one, which first appeared on Innsmouth Free Press, are now up (with a few extras) on Kindle. The print version is also up, though the cover’s needing a little tweaking right now. I’ll be putting up corrections for the cover in the next day or so. Everything else looks good.

TIME TO RETURN THE FAVOR – Donna (guest star Briana Buckmaster) calls Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) for help after her niece, Wendy (guest star Sarah Dugdale), goes missing. The three hunters discover Wendy was kidnapped by a man who sells human parts to monsters in a grotesque online auction and race to save her before it is too late. Amyn Kaderali directed the episode written by Davy Perez (#1311). Original airdate 1/25/2018.

Alexander Calvert gave an interview to Elle in which he talked about the fandom’s reaction to him, convention life, and the Instagram account he and his girlfriend have up for his very fluffy and adorable cat, The Lord Tyrion.

Set info is coming out about episode 13.14 (“Only the Best Intentions”), which began filming on January 2. Christian Keys (alt-Michael) tweeted a photo of himself with Calvert as they went back to filming in the new year (Calvert also tweeted about filming in a forest). This indicates alt-Michael and Jack will be in 13.14 and interacting in the same scene. It appears that alt-Bobby will also be in this episode, since Jim Beaver tweeted a first-look selfie the next day and mentioned filming with Samantha Smith (Mary) in mud (reportedly in Belcarra Park in Port Moody). She responded in the same thread by showing her alt-verse costume on the floor. Hmmm, could it be our alt-world cast are now in the SPNverse as of 13.14? Or in the Bad Place? Or do they get back in this episode, since there’s filming in the quarry that’s the alt-verse set this week?

Danneel and her husband will be opening up their new brewery, The Family Business, for … uh … business in Dripping Springs, TX on my birthday. And I’ll be stuck up here. Oh, well.

CW head Mark Pedowitz has re-upped his contract with the network. He also issued his annual “This show isn’t going anywhere until the leads hang it up” announcement. While he was cagey in a recent interview about making it official (because they’re not ready to announce show renewals), it’s highly doubtful the show won’t get a 14th season – and a full one, at that – unless Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles don’t want to return.

Supernatural alumnus Sterling K. Brown (Gordon Walker) won a Golden Globe award this week for best actor in his latest role in series This Is Us. He’d previously won an Emmy last fall for the same role.

Warner Bros has announced details about the upcoming Wayward Sisters spin-off. As we already know, it will star Kim Rhodes (Jody Mills) and the rumor that Briana Buckmaster (Donna Hanscum) is in it was confirmed. Also starring will be Kathryn Newton (Claire Novak) and Alex Jones (Katherine Ramdeen), as well as new lead character Patience Turner (played by Clark Backo). Another new character, Kaia (Yadira Guevar-Prip), has been added to the main cast list. Kaia’s “gift” will be the ability to spirit travel.

The spin-off premise and new characters will be introduced via several episodes in season 13. Patience will be introduced in “Patience” (13.03), which also brings back season one character Missouri Moseley (who is Patience’s estranged grandmother and from whom Patience has inherited her psychic gift). The actual backdoor pilot will be “Wayward Sisters” (13.10).

Star Kim Rhodes told EW that there’s a good in-SPNverse reason why the show will be set in a single location (Sioux Falls) instead of moving around. Rhymes with “Hellmouth,” I’ll bet. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s to do with the rip between universes in that crappy old boat from 12.09.

The show is currently averaging a 0.6 in the demo, putting it second on the network and even with last season. Between this and the resurgence of Riverdale, the CW is the only broadcast network that has not dropped in average demo since last season.

The show had a repeat last week that came in at 0.2/1 in the demo (0.246 in the unrounded overnights) and 1.03 million in audience in the overnights. It was preempted by holiday programming during Christmas week.

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We need your help!

Contribute monthly via Patreon (which includes perks), make a one-time donation through Paypal, or buy us a coffee. Want more of my recaps and reviews? Check out The Supernatural Codex: Season 1, out on Kindle and in print.

[lots o’ spoilers ahead]

While this episode was by no means perfect, I’m happy to report my relief when I first watched it that it was not half as boring as the previous one, albeit it ran a trifle long in some spots (it was only about two minutes over the usual time, but some of that dragged a bit). I was also pleased to find, despite some serious flaws in the character’s central conflict, that I rather liked Patience and the actress who played her. This was a very good thing. After “Rising Son,” I was beginning to wonder if it was time to hang it up with this show.

I was also happy to discover that even though this was the first of the lead-up episodes to the backdoor pilot for the new spin-off, Wayward Sisters, it had a fair bit of conflict and action involving Sam and Dean, who each had a storyline this week. Last season suffered greatly from Sam and Dean: Guest Stars in Their Own Show Syndrome. So far this season, that’s been greatly alleviated, at least for Jensen Ackles, who’s not fielding any newborns at home this year.

The funniest (and most reassuring in terms of how the new show will go over with fans) thing is that everyone has a different favorite. They like Claire, but they hate Patience. They like Kaia, but they hate Alex. They think Jody and Donna should be Hunting, but just together and not with any younger charges. Nobody can agree except that a lot of fans have already picked a favorite, if only in relation to at least one other character they feel shouldn’t be on the show. This indicates that fans in general have already got past the initial phase of accepting the overall concept of a group of women Hunting together and mentoring each other. They just can’t agree on which characters they think should be in that group. Considering most fans can’t really agree on liking Sam, Dean, Castiel, Crowley, and so on, even after 13 seasons, that’s a good sign for Wayward Sisters, not bad.

Which is not to say the episode (or even the new show’s franchise concept so far) lacks flaws. Missouri Moseley returns in this one. Remember her? Season one? Kripke-penned “Home”? Let me refresh your memory – she was an African American psychic who fawned over Sam a lot and smacked Dean upside the head for … uh … reasons. Or something. That Missouri.

Now, obviously, there was some unfinished business between her and the Brothers, so you could say she had a reason to come back. Was this addressed? Nope. Sam doesn’t even see Missouri this time round. He’s too busy babysitting Jack for more than a quick phone call, and he and Dean have a fight over just sending Jody to deal with it before Dean goes off to help her. Dean gets no apology or even acknowledgement of any kind from her about her previous treatment of him (though she does commiserate with him on his “recent losses,” which she senses in his mind, so there’s that). In fact, when he makes the logical protest to her staying behind (while there’s a psychic-eating monster on the loose), Missouri’s Inner Bitch comes roaring out. Consider those loose ends still dangling.

Anyway, she’s only there to introduce a younger, prettier psychic, her granddaughter Patience. God forbid the CW have an older, gifted female (let alone an older female PoC) character as a main lead. I didn’t love the way Missouri was fridged to jumpstart the title character’s story.

It bothered me that not only were the two PoC female leads for Wayward Sisters introduced very late in the day, but they were introduced in a fundamentally different way from that of Claire and Alex, who were introduced as victims of the supernatural (like Sam, Dean, Jody and Donna), rather than as essentially supernatural beings (like Patience and Kaia). Also, the CW has an extremely poor track record with PoC female characters with powers, wherein they end up powerful handmaidens to white girls. Bonnie from The Vampire Diaries fairly leaps to mind here.

Not helping is the way Patience’s father, James, is portrayed. It’s one thing to be introduced to the supernatural world in a traumatic way. A lot of people will go straight to denial, initially, as the show has demonstrated many times. But James was raised in the Life. He knows the supernatural exists. Hell, he can even work divination magic. He just wants to stick his head in the sand, even if it gets his mother and daughter killed.

The thing is that if you read between the lines (and remember how Missouri was introduced almost 12 seasons ago), there’s plenty of reason for James to resent his mother. Missouri dragged him along with her on down the road to Hunting supernatural things and it seems pretty clear that it traumatized him. The catalyst for their final estrangement may have been Missouri’s cocky miscalculation about the fate of his wife (Patience’s mother), but it’s clear a lot of bad things happened before that.

But the writing wants us to believe that James is the bad guy here. Since the episode never addresses the stark contrast in how Missouri treated Sam (with powers) and Dean (no powers as far she could see) in season one, it neatly avoids addressing the pretty stark contrast between Missouri’s treatment of James her son (no apparent powers) and Patience her granddaughter (practically a Mary Sue). Missouri is a bigot when it comes to plain, old, ordinary humans. It’s therefore a tad difficult to believe the episode’s portrayal of James – a man old enough to have a teenage daughter and successful enough to be raising her in a safe, nurturing, upper-middle-class environment – as too immature to forgive his saintly mother.

It doesn’t help that the episode is wildly inconsistent in portraying Missouri and Patience’s talents. Dean tells Jody that Missouri can read objects, but what we actually see her do, for the most part, is read minds to a limited extent and foretell the future in blurry images. That’s not reading the past from objects, Show. Reading objects is a different ESP talent.

Also, we’re apparently supposed to get the idea from that that she is able to foretell her and the MOTW’s futures enough to determine that she can’t escape the MOTW, at least not without endangering her family (she specifically sees James, but then talks about Patience to him). How is this even possible when you have two new variables – Dean and Jody – in the equation? That smacks of overly convenient writing. You’d think Missouri would have learned from the mistake she made in predicting the fate of James’ wife/Patience’s mom that her powers are not infallible, but nope.

In addition, the family member who ends up in immediate danger is Patience, not James. Patience is threatened by the MOTW immediately after he kills her grandmother. It seems he was able to kill Missouri, and then zip past Dean and Jody to attack Patience before they could even contact James. I call shenanigans on that timing.

In fact, I call shenanigans on that whole MOTW, but let’s finish talking about Patience’s powers, first. Patience initially has a dream that warns her of both her grandmother’s death and the MOTW’s attack on her later at the school. This dream seems to be a mix of literal precognition (the attack) and metaphor (her grandmother’s ghost warning her). Okay, this is a dream we’re talking about, so a little funky logic is acceptable.

But then, after she’s captured, Patience has a prolonged waking vision of her father, Jody and then Dean being killed, which allows her to warn each of them about the MOTW’s attack. But this is a different kind of precog from what she previously showed and all three types are different from what Missouri had.

This may seem like nitpicking, but if you look at how Sam’s precog was shown in the first two seasons, it’s very consistent and that’s pretty important to the story. He has quick flashes, usually of something fatal happening, accompanied by nasty headaches. If he acts on them, he is usually able to stop the event from happening, though something else bad may happen, instead. Sometimes, he has dreams. Less often, he has waking visions. But they are always the same kind of thing.

Precog and even telepathy are shown similarly for other characters such as Psykids like Ava (in “Hunted”) and Andy (sending Dean a vision in “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1”), and even Chuck in “The Monster at the End of This Book.” We also have a clear origin for these visions. The Psykids apparently get theirs from Azazel, while Chuck gets them from the angels. Yes, I know we later find out Chuck is God, but his conversation with Zachariah at the end of that episode makes it clear the angels are sending him visions. Maybe they’re even sending them to the Psykids. Who knows? But the point is that these visions of the future don’t just pop up out of nowhere.

Missouri and Patience’s visions do, which means they’re much more malleable and “magical” in the sense of being overly convenient writing divorced from the logic of the worldbuilding. The characters don’t have these visions because the visions make sense in the context of the story. They have them just to move the story along.

Now let’s check out the MOTW. Unfortunately, whoever made up the recap spoiled the crap out of the MOTW “surprise” (admittedly, that cat came right out of the bag in the teaser, anyway), which is that the MOTW was a Wraith. I don’t think a Wraith was the right MOTW for what the episode wanted to do and the actor they got was definitely not right to convey what they wanted. Or maybe he was, which kinda makes it worse.

Now, the Wraith’s targeting psychics was fine, as far as it went. We know Wraiths like to feed on a specific kind of human, often a “soft” target that can’t fight back very well. And therein lies the problem. The Wraith we first met in “Sam, Interrupted” in season five was working at a psych hospital, targeting patients. If they weren’t psychotic when they came in, they sure were by the time the Wraith was ready to feed on them. The Wraith possessed a toxin, spread via touch, that made people psychotic. This particular Wraith actually enjoyed the taste of brains under extreme psychological distress and played an Angel of Mercy to get them. Subsequent mentions of them followed a similar pattern.

Aside from targeting those who generally can’t fight back very well (psychics, who are otherwise ordinary humans), the Wraith in “Patience” follows none of these rules. He doesn’t bother to poison or weaken his targets. He simply attacks them and overpowers them.

He doesn’t treat them as food, either. The actor who plays the Wraith plays feeding as a straight-up sexual serial-killing thing, which is not how the Wraith in “Sam, Interrupted” acted. The Wraith in “Patience” attacks women, specifically, and creeps all over them. The Wraith in “Sam, Interrupted” attacked different types of people, which actually made it scarier because it was hard to see a pattern at first, let alone who could be the Wraith. You couldn’t see it coming.

In “Patience,” we know right away. There’s no mystery about it whatsoever, especially since there is no attempt to give any backstory to the MOTW aside from where he got his predilection for psychic brains. It’s all very CW. In a bad way.

And it also means that the Wraith is way overpowered for this type of MOTW. I can see him taking out James, maybe even Jody, if he got lucky. But Dean? On top of the other two? Nope. Not the organized and well-armed way they came in.

Now, if the writers had used an MOTW that was known for being fast and strong, I might buy that. A Vampire or a Shapeshifter or a Djinn I could see. Or if they’d argued that this was the Alpha Wraith, maybe. But as it was, I didn’t buy this particular MOTW, or his ability to fight and evade and take down healthy human prey.

Hell, even Patience was able to break off the Wraith’s stinger (the way Dean did in “Sam, Interrupted,” albeit while barely able to stay upright due to being poisoned). Not exactly an intimidating monster. I just didn’t buy that he could take Dean at full strength, let alone Dean on top of Jody and James. And if the MOTW wasn’t that dangerous, that makes Patience’s precog flashes rather silly and unnecessary to the plot.

I got the impression that we were supposed to have the usual balance of opinions between Sam and Dean this week, where Sam was on one side and Dean on the other, and we were supposed to see both sides as having merit. Which was sort of true if you squinted, but only because the writing kept Telling us Dean’s judgement was off, while actually Showing something a bit different.

For a start, not only is Dean in character for telling Patience at the end to grab as much Normal as she can, but he’s right. Hunting never ends well for the Hunter. As Dean has put it many different ways in the past, “it ends bloody or sad … you’re covered in blood until you’re covered in your own blood.”

So, when Jody tells Patience that Dean’s wrong and that if Patience wants to get into the Life and use her “gift,” she can call her, I just want to suggest that Jody first tell Patience why she lived alone in a big, old, empty house before she took in Claire and Alex. Gee, whatever happened to her husband and son? Patience deserves to hear that story before she makes her decision.

Yes, the supernatural world is the real world on this show. Yes, once you become aware of it, you see it everywhere. Even worse, it becomes aware of you. But step into the shadows, engage too closely, and your projected lifespan drops like a stone.

Dean’s not wrong (neither is James, really). It’s just very hard to get away from the supernatural world once you get plunged into it.

Then there’s Sam’s “training” of Jack. Points, at least, for the show having Sam remember that he used to be psychic, too … sort of. Sam talks about being different when he was younger and worrying about having a “darkness” inside him, that Dean and Castiel helped him fight it, so there’s that. But then Sam proceeds (as he always has) to make it All About Sam and try to push Jack into learning more about his powers, even though it’s really obvious that Jack is afraid to use them.

Now, Jack does mention Dean saying he’s evil, but he also brings up the reasons why Dean feels that way and agrees with them. He did kill his mother by being born. He has hurt people. He has lost control of his powers. He even mentions feeling Asmodeus in his mind, pushing him and coopting his powers, during his attempt to raise the Shedim the previous episode. But what Sam mostly latches onto (as he very belatedly decides to stop pushing Jack) is that Jack is afraid of Dean (despite being physically invulnerable), not that Sam is doing pretty much the same thing to Jack that Asmodeus did and for equally selfish reasons – and that this bothers Jack a whole lot.

When Dean gets back, the hints throughout the episode that all is not well with him (such as Jody holding him back when he starts to ream James out for lying to Patience) come to a head. Sam calls Dean on being so harsh to Jack and threatening him (even though Dean’s been very upfront about that, so it should hardly be a surprise to Sam).

To the writers’ credit, they do have Dean finally calling Sam out right back on Sam’s less-than-altruistic motives for getting Jack to learn how to control his powers, saying that Sam doesn’t really care about Jack. He just wants to use Jack’s powers to get Mary back, using Jack as “an interdimensional can opener.” And there isn’t a whole in this episode that contradicts Dean on that point.

Dean would never come out and say this, but Sam’s example of himself as a person Dean saved in spite of Sam’s being a “freak” is also a poor one – Sam hurt a lot of people because Dean didn’t kill him. Not that the angels and demons would have allowed Sam to stay dead, but still.

In the end, Dean can’t hold back. His barely leashed pain and rage pour out as he yells that he “can’t even look at the kid” because he blames Jack directly for losing Mary and Castiel.

Unfortunately, he does that as Jack is listening nearby (which seems uncharacteristically dumb). This accidentally sparks Jack’s powers as Jack spontaneously tries to do something “good” and also reaches out to his foster daddy, Castiel. In the process, Castiel wakes up someplace dark and weird.

But that’s for next time.

Next: The Big Empty: While trying to figure out who is killing a grief counselor’s patients, the Brothers and Jack end up in family therapy. Meanwhile, Castiel wakes up somewhere dark and strange.

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Contribute monthly via Patreon (which includes perks), make a one-time donation through Paypal, or buy us a coffee. Want more of my recaps and reviews? Check out The Supernatural Codex: Season 1, out on Kindle and in print.

[lots o’ spoilers ahead]

I have a confession to make – yes, I was very busy this past fall, but the main reason I have been putting off reviewing this episode is that it was boring. Very, very boring. And on top of the previous episode (the season premiere, no less), I just couldn’t hack rewatching boring one more time, at least for a while.

Well, I’ve rewatched it now, so let’s buckle down and get to it. I’d like to review everything for this season up to this point before the show returns on January 18.

This was not a good episode. If anything, it was worse than the previous week, a bit like the Nepotism Duo’s take on the same themes Dabb had introduced. Yikes.

The pacing dragged and there was an endless amount of infodumpy dialogue that damned near put me to sleep. When one of the most intriguing parts is a scene you never got to see (Dean hallucinating sheep on the road), there’s a problem.

As usual with these two writers, the episode was overstuffed with characters and ideas, none of them developed beyond the thinnest of surface levels. Questionable racial overtones popped up in the one loyal demon having an African American host and acting in a servile manner (as if the writers watched Get Out and completely missed the point of the film) toward the new YED, but also in giving alt-Michael an African-American vessel. I’m all for diversity, but someone clearly didn’t think through the Unfortunate Implications involved in that casting (coughJefferson and Sally Hemingscoughcough) or just plain forgot all about the Very Important Bloodlines storyline from the first five seasons. And I don’t mean that terrible backdoor pilot.

Someone in the comments here (I think it was Eva) suggested that alt-Michael is using one of alt-Raphael’s vessels, which would be cool, if true. I doubt these writers are that subtle, but it would be fun if alt-Michael isn’t really alt-Michael but alt-Raphael or even an angel who got souped up the way Godstiel did. That would actually make him look pretty clever and devious. This storyline desperately needs some kind of twist. After all, if alt-Michael is looking for archangel grace (oops, that’s a bit later on), why not hunt down alt-Gabriel or bring in alt-Raphael? Where are they?

I also was suspicious of Lucifer not recognizing alt-Michael (or the angel squad not recognizing Lucifer). Angels and archangels are supposed to be able to recognize each other, just as angels and demons can see true demon faces. Being in an alternate timeline shouldn’t change that. But the writing was so messy that it was really hard to tell if this was a red herring or just a plothole.

I wanted to be impressed by alt-Michael, but something was off with him. Granted, the clumsy fist-fight between archangels didn’t help with either his or Lucifer’s gravitas. Who even thought that was a good idea? But I dunno. He just felt one-dimensional.

Speaking of archangels, what was up with Lucifer wandering around barren dunes with Mary in tow, complaining that she couldn’t keep up? He’s an angel. He still has wings. He can pick her up and fly all over the world multiple times in an eyeblink. I get that he was trying to stay under the radar a bit, but come on. Even that didn’t work out for him, or Mary.

I can’t even with what they did to poor Mary. She encounters a single human, who happens to be a male Hunter, who claims wimminfolk can’t be Hunters and he hasn’t seen a woman in who knows when. So, what does he immediately try to do? Rape her at gunpoint. And is she able to defend herself, this woman who was actually doing just fine on her own against all sorts of humans and creatures all last year? Nope. She needs Lucifer to come in and save the day by … punching the guy through the torso from behind. Eugh. I can’t believe this script was half-written by a woman.

But hey, this is also a script that demands Dean get yet another kickass fight in which he senses the demon behind him, thrashes it good and hard, but can’t land the final blow, so he needs to get saved by Sam who … stabs the demon from behind. I sense a theme.

Look, I get it. Jared Padalecki is in his thirties now and has suffered some pretty brutal injuries on set over the years. I don’t blame him for wanting to dial it back on the stunts. But the way the writers are choosing to write around this is not cutting it. Sam needs to be doing his own stuff, not stealing Dean’s wins at the last minute. Not even Dean getting the next demon with the thrown angel sword made that less annoying. It’s bad writing. Give Sam fights (or other important work) Padalecki can do without hurting himself. Leave Dean’s fights alone.

There’s this general trend of obviousness and over-explaining in the episode of things that need a little mystery, while enormous plotholes are left alone, reminiscent of other winners from this duo like the best-forgotten Ghost!Bobby-centric episode, “Of Grave Importance.” For example, why are we suddenly shown a demon like Asmodeus teleporting away, when before, a demon would just walk out of frame or smoke off whenever other characters turned their backs? Why are we now shown archangels, who can fly at the speed of light (or faster), as slow-arcing fireballs, when showing the look on the face of a human, and putting the sound of wings on the soundtrack as an angel flew off, was effective enough?

What’s with the stupid fistfight between two beings who can incinerate half the planet between them? We suddenly have the budget to show angels flying and demons teleporting, but we don’t have any money left over for some decent FX and fight choreography between two archangels?

I suppose we have to talk about the new YED, AKA the latest attempt to spit on both Azazel and Crowley’s memories with the fans simultaneously. Even Dean calls Asmodeus Colonel Sanders a few episodes later, but the fandom was way ahead of him.

Asmodeus (and, for that matter, Lucifer) is an obvious attempt to replace the departed Crowley. Now mind you, lots of characters have come and gone on this show. It is on its 13th season, after all. And I get that some sort of bad blood behind the scenes precipitated Crowley’s abrupt departure and Mark Sheppard’s absence from this past season’s gag reel. The character had been around a long time, probably well past his sell-by date. As I’d been telling people for years, he was as expendable as the rest of the supporting cast (except for Castiel because they already tried writing him out and it didn’t go well).

But the way they wrote him out and then completely ignored the character came off as simultaneously clumsy and mean-spirited. He had a lot of fans, Show. Respect that.

Adding to this, Asmodeus plain sucks as a character, let alone a major villain. He’s one-note and that one note grates. His powers don’t make sense. His motivation doesn’t make sense (I get he’s pretending to be Lucifer’s lackey to gain power and rule Hell, but why raise the Shedim?). And he lacks charm. Plus, constantly having him played by other actors reduces the audience investment in the main actor (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) and his performance. It’s a thankless task, poor guy.

The worst part is that if they hadn’t killed Crowley off, he’d be doing what Asmodeus is currently doing. Hell, he already did that poisonous father figure storyline twice – once with Kevin and once with Amara. Mark Sheppard even claimed at a con that Dabb had wanted to get rid of Crowley for a while, presumably because the character was played out, yet here we have a brand-new character and he’s got the same old tired storyline. He’s so freakin’ one-dimensional that he twirls (well … strokes) his mustache. I mean, come on.

Not to mention, what’s the deal with trying to spy on the Brothers by impersonating (not even possessing) other people? Why then leave just two demons from Central Casting to deal with the Brothers when it’s later shown he could just choke them out? Why would he even think Jack already had some kind of emotional connection to Team Free Will? It all makes him look weak and stupid, to the point where Sam has to be written like an idiot to build up this new baddie. Dean, at least, doesn’t trust the overly friendly bartender, even if he never finds out about her human doppleganger’s murder.

No wonder this new YED/Princes of Hell storyline doesn’t work (in stark contrast to the Knights of Hell/Mark of Cain plot, which did). The original YED, Azazel, was largely an unknown. He was creepy, unique, mysterious, fanatical. Even after we learned his agenda, we never learned much about him. He never lost his mystery.

The new YEDs are painfully overexplained, with too much Tell and not much Show. Why are we shown Asmodeus with shapeshifting powers and scars on his host body? Why would a demon even need shapeshifting powers when it can possess someone at will (so why cut the bartender’s throat or impersonate a Prophet when you can possess them?). How the hell does a creature consisting of black smoke manifest scars on the human it’s possessing? Speaking of which, why are the allegedly demonic Shedim solid monsters? Folks, that stuff belongs on the Makes No Sense shelf, not in an episode. It adds nothing to the show and contradicts previous canon.

And what’s the deal with the Shedim, who are about as scary as Care Bears? Why not – oh, I dunno – rewatch “Shadow” from season one and bring back the Daevas? They were scary. Ah, but that would involve having to set that very stupid scene in the middle of some random field in anything but broad, freakin’ daylight. Because nothing says “scary,” especially on this show, like making it look as though Keith Szarabajka’s about to race through the fields shouting, “If you dig it, they will come!”

Speaking of Szarabajka, while I’m thrilled to have him back (love me some 80s Equalizer nostalgia), what the hell was going on with Donatello? I can sort of see Dean not really reacting to Donatello’s revelation that Amara sucked out his soul a year past. As Sam points out to Jack, Dean’s not firing on all cylinders mentally right now. Already emotionally overloaded, he may just be rolling with the idea that if Donatello’s okay with his current situation, and isn’t hurting anyone (the Mr. Rogers reference), then that situation’s dealt with for the moment. Triage and all that.

Also, Dean is feeling lost after Chuck apparently ignored his prayer and has never felt comfortable with using his relationship with Amara, who is every bit as volatile and unpredictable as he is. He’s not likely to call on her if Chuck didn’t answer, even if it’s entirely possible she’d be more likely to show up.

But what’s going on with Sam? Sam’s had no soul in the past. He knows what it’s like. It’s always bothered him, seeing other people without souls. Yet here he is, shrugging off Donatello’s lack of soul as if it’s not a big deal. What do they mostly talk about when Sam is fooled by the fake “Donatello” (Asmodeus in disguise)? Jack, of course. Yet, Sam never twigs that maybe this obsession with Jack and his burgeoning superpowers is just a tad odd for a man who has no one else to talk with about the fact that he’s missing his soul, especially the only two people who might be able to help him get it back (not like Amara would miss it).

It’s funny that I’ve been seeing all these complaints about Dean being “mean” and “whiny” and cruel to puir Jack, but nothing about how Sam is way too calm about all this. In fact, I’m not terribly surprised that Jack is choosing to look up to Dean. Dean’s the only one being honest with him. It’s also possible that Jack imprinted on Dean a bit via his imprinting on Castiel (who is obsessed with Dean). Weirdly enough, Jack may only really feel safe with Dean. Look at how Dean was the only one who noticed he was repeatedly stabbing himself. Jack is desperately seeking boundaries, control, over his powers (not really to expand them) and only Dean offers those boundaries.

Dean’s promise at the end of the episode probably was intended to be reassuring on some level. It was exactly the promise Dean was begging to exact from Sam and Castiel when he had the MoC. Jack may be in a similar position (losing control to darkness and not wanting to hurt innocents, but also unable to die), so Dean offers him the only reassurance he thinks would be helpful. If Jack does go dark (as he fears), Dean will be the one who takes care of it. If Jack doesn’t go dark, well, Dean’s not going to let anyone else kill Jack but himself. So, if Jack turns out to be good, Dean’s got his back.

This is, of course, leaving aside all the stuff about how this is a perfectly natural reaction from Dean, and completely in character. Why wouldn’t Dean feel this way? From his perspective, Jack had a direct hand in Kelly and Castiel basically marching to their deaths (Jack may not have meant to, but they were definitely brainwashed to some extent). Jack also created the rift that took away or helped destroy Mary, Castiel and Crowley. Everything Dean has heard that’s remotely reliable indicates Jack will be a willing tool of his father, Lucifer, in wrecking the world (again), since that’s what he was created to be. Why wouldn’t Dean want to destroy Jack?

Dean’s grief-fueled madness, and Sam’s reaction to it, is also problematic for Sam’s characterization. Sam “reassures” Jack in an avuncular tone that Dean just has his wires crossed and doesn’t really want to kill Jack. Um … first of all, it’s painfully obvious that killing Jack is precisely what Dean does want to do, considering that’s the first action he goes for after his prayer to Chuck apparently fails. If Jack weren’t covered with thick plot armor – sorry, invulnerable to angel blades – he’d be dead, already.

Second, the way Sam frames it, in an almost jovial voice, makes it clear that if it comes down to Dean or Jack, Jack’s screwed as far as Sam is concerned. He won’t protect Jack if it really comes to it.

Now, Jack’s just a baby. How else can he be anything but freaked out by that lack of reassurance? No wonder he clings to Dean’s brutal honesty. At least, if he can win Dean’s affection and loyalty, he’ll know it’s real.

In fact, Sam sounds indistinguishable in his “concern” for Jack from Asmodeus or the angels. He only seems to want Jack around for Jack’s powers (showing a lot of rather creepy interest in them) and what those powers can do for him and Dean.

The thing is that Alexander Calvert (Jack) actually has a reasonably high amount of chemistry with both Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Their characters’ adoption of Jack and attempts to raise Jack work because there’s actual affection there. That kind of chemistry doesn’t just happen, so I can see why the show would want to keep him around.

Alas, as a written character, Jack is a hot mess and he’s not fitting into the storyline at all well. He’s ridiculously overpowered and in his current state is an obvious deus ex machina. Adding to the suspension-of-disbelief carnage, convenient new powers pop up every week, aiding the writers a little too much in getting out of self-inflicted plot corners, to the point of making the situation a whole lot less scary than it could be. They need to power him down. They also need to play out this Lucifer baby-daddy-from-Hell storyline and move on.

The only actually interesting thing about the writing for this kid is that the Brothers are trying to raise him. Dean’s had parenting experience. Sam has almost none. So, it makes sense Sam is only able to relate to Jack as the young man he appears to be, whereas Dean understands better that Jack is just a baby. A super-powered baby, but still … just a child. Who needs a lot of guidance.

I can understand giving him a bit of power so he has enough plot armor to survive around the Brothers (unlike poor Kevin), but he’s got way too much right now and it kills the story tension. I mean, come on, that Impala ride to the rescue in Act Four was painfully slow. And I get that Jack is young, but the ruse to get him to let the Shedim out was so obvious it made him look stupid. Let’s stop doing that, Show.

One thing I will say is that the season began to improve considerably after this episode. “Rising Son” even looks a bit better in retrospect, mainly because some storylines that seemed to be going in a really annoying direction (and probably would have in earlier seasons) progressed or resolved better after this episode than I expected. But that doesn’t actually make it a good episode in its own right.

Next: Patience: We probably didn’t need Missouri Moseley to return at this point. But she does, in an episode that introduces one of the last two main characters for the upcoming spin-off, Wayward Sisters.

We need your help!

My collected recaps and reviews of season one, which first appeared on Innsmouth Free Press, are now up (with a few extras) on Kindle. The print version is also up, though the cover’s needing a little tweaking right now. I’ll be putting up corrections for the cover in the next day or so. Everything else looks good.

My live recap for episode 13.09 is up. During the Christmas Hellatus, I’ll be catching up on my reviews for this season. Hope everyone will be rewatching “A Very Supernatural Christmas” from season three. I do that every year on or around Christmas.

Season 13 titlessofar: “Lost and Found” (13.01), synopsis and photos, promo, preview, sneak peeks, and Shaving People, Punting Things, as well as live recap and review; “The Rising Son” (13.02) synopsis and photos and promo; “Patience” (the first spinoff set-up episode) (13.03) synopsis; “The Big Empty” (13.04) synopsis, promo and official photos; “Advanced Thanatology” (13.05) synopsis, photos and promo; “Tombstone” (13.06) synopsis, promo and photos; “War of the Worlds” (13.07) synopsis photos, sneak peek and promo; “The Scorpion and the Frog” (13.08) synopsis, photos, promo and sneak peek; “The Bad Place” (13.09) (airing December 7) synopsis, photos, sneak peeks and promo; Christmas Break; “Wayward Sisters” (13.10, backdoor pilot for the spinoff, airs January 18), synopsis, photos, interviews and promo; “Various & Sundry Villains” (13.11) (previously called “The Midnight Train” and originally, the title was “Stakes on a Train,” though there also appears to have been a switch of episodes between 13.11 and 13.12), this or the next one (depending on which is the real 13.11) is supposed to be Donna-heavy; “Breakdown” (13.12) Rowena returns; “Devil’s Bargain” (13.13), written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming, introducing Danneel Ackles as a faith healer named Sister Jo who is blackmailed by Lucifer, set photos here; “Only the Best Intentions” (13.14); “A Most Holy Man” (13.15); “ScoobyNatural” (13.16, cartoon episode, appears in March), “The Thing” (13.17); “Bring ’em Back Alive” (13.18).

Andrew Dabb claimed to TV Line that Dean’s conversation with Billie this season would have a follow-up down the road. Not really holding my breath, but hey, Dean’s storyline has lasted longer this season so far than last season. So, there’s that.

Danneel Ackles posted her first two set photos, one with her husband and one (rather character-spoilery) with Misha Collins.

A Shaving People Punting Things video came out with an extended blooper reel of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles pranking Alexander Calvert (and Misha Collins, though Collins is kind of in on the pranks).

Warner Bros has announced details about the upcoming Wayward Sisters spin-off. As we already know, it will star Kim Rhodes (Jody Mills) and the rumor that Briana Buckmaster (Donna Hanscum) is in it was confirmed. Also starring will be Kathryn Newton (Claire Novak) and Alex Jones (Katherine Ramdeen), as well as new character Patience Turner (played by Clark Backo). Another new character, Kaia (Yadira Guevar-Prip), has been added to the main cast list. Kaia’s “gift” will be the ability to spirit travel.

The spin-off premise and new characters will be introduced via several episodes in season 13. Patience will be introduced in “Patience” (13.03), which also brings back season one character Missouri Moseley (who is Patience’s estranged grandmother and from whom Patience has inherited her psychic gift). The actual backdoor pilot will be “Wayward Sisters” (13.10).

Star Kim Rhodes told EW that there’s a good in-SPNverse reason why the show will be set in a single location (Sioux Falls) instead of moving around. Rhymes with “Hellmouth,” I’ll bet. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s to do with the rip between universes in that crappy old boat from 12.09.

The show’s ratings for the winter finale (13.09) remained steady in the demo at 0.6/2 and up 10 thousand to 1.74 million in audience. The episode (got a 0.540 in the overnights and half-hours of 0.553 and 0.526, respectively.

The show had a repeat last week that came in at 0.2/1 in the demo (0.208 in the overnights) and 870 thousand in audience.

The Live+7 ratings for “The Scorpion and the Frog” (13.08) rose from 0.6 to 1.0 in the demo and from 1.746 to 2.829 million, while Christmas finale “The Bad Place” (13.09) rose from 0.5 to 1.0 and from 1.702 to 2.629 million.

Like this column? You can help keep it going by contributing monthly via Patreon (which includes perks), making a one-time donation through Paypal, or buying us a coffee.

We need your help!

My collected recaps and reviews of season one, which first appeared on Innsmouth Free Press, are now up (with a few extras) on Kindle. The Kindle version is available through Amazon. The print version is also up, though the cover’s needing a little tweaking right now. I’ve ordered a copy for a final galley proof to make any changes that don’t show up online (KDP doesn’t let you do that before the book goes live because KDP works for Satan).

Anyhoo, we start off with a standard recap of the season so far with some very lame generic guitar music. It’s pretty boring. This is the Nepotism Duo on again tonight, so I’m expecting to be bored and hoping not to be (too) offended. But I’m trying to keep my expectations low.

Cut to Now and a blonde white girl necking with a stereotypically long-haired Native American guy (oops, so much for avoiding offense; I can see this going ugly in a hurry), as they discuss his latest painting, her needing to go to work, and his latest client.

It turns out said client is Jack.

After the woman leaves, Jack starts asking the guy about his ability to dreamwalk to other worlds (basically, spirit travel). Jack makes it sound unique, never mind that Dean spirit travels rather frequently and as late as a few episodes ago.

But nope, the Nep Duo are in full-on white condescension mode and have Jack go on and on about the guy’s abilities in that Mystical Native American New Age stuff that many Native Americans actually quite hate.

Jack adds insult to injury by offering the guy money. Anyhoo, the guy is two months behind in his rent, so he agrees to go looking, but it goes poorly. The place he goes to is nasty and when he tries to back out, Jack uses his power to make the guy (Derek) stay and hurts him a whole lot.

Derek’s girlfriend comes home to find him dead with his eyes burned out.

Cue title cards.

Cut to Dean leaving a message with Patience, who has a conversation with her father about how she’s ignoring Dean. Sam, meanwhile, has been talking to “Castiel” (because the Nep Duo really do believe the Brothers are stupid enough to fall for low-rent Asmodeus’ trickery) and getting nothing. Then Jodie calls them and tells them about Doomed Teaser Stereotypical Native American Guy. She says Derek’s girlfriend saw Jack beforehand.

Dean recognizes Grody Alt-SPN World in one of Derek’s paintings.

In the car, Dean points out that it appears Jack has gone rogue for real and maybe they need to talk to a tribal leader to get more info. Sam deflects by saying they should talk to a young girl, another dreamwalker named Kaia, whom Derek had been corresponding with, instead. Because hey, why be culturally sensitive or leave innocents out of the fray, am I right?

Kaia, meanwhile, is in a drug support group and she has a creep for a counselor who keeps pushing her. She says that she only takes speed to keep from sleeping. The counselor continues not to get it. Yay for undercutting that whole pro-getting help message your cast is trying to send in their off-set hours, Nep Duo. Nice job. [/sarcasm]

Anyhoo, 30 seconds later, she meets Jack. Gee, I wonder if he will help her get out of the treatment center?

So, Jack cuts right to the chase and says he’s a “friend of Derek,” that she’s the most powerful dreamwalker ever, and he can get her out of stir (why do these characters always have to be the BESTEST, MOSTEST of their kind ever?). This reinforces my apprehension that the show is choosing to add on two new Wayward Sisters who are not only WoCs (fine with that) but also ridiculously overpowered with magical talents (not so fine with that). So far, it seems they will be getting the Walking Plot Device treatment that Bonnie on The Vampire Diaries got, which is not good. I’m all for the CW beginning to write young women better like … right now.

So, just as Kaia is following Jack out (I did like the way the actress played that one, so points to her for that), we see the Impala drive up. Sam infodumps to Dean – as they get out of the car – that Kaia is an orphan. She never knew Daddy and Mom died when she was 12 (what is this show’s creepy obsession with having girl characters hit the streets in their preteens?). An aunt took her in, but died of cancer. So, Kaia’s been on her own ever since because, like, this country doesn’t have any kind of foster care system, or anything. [rolls eyes]

Also, I don’t quite know why Sam is As You Know, Dean-ing as they get out of the car when they had an entire trip to get up to speed on Kaia.

So, Kaia’s jailbreak is not entirely without incident. As they’re walking out, they encounter her jerk of a counselor. Jack rather forcefully puts him to sleep and then literally busts through a locked emergency door that, oddly enough, doesn’t sound an alarm. As he puts it to Kaia, “You’re not the only one with powers.”

Kaia chooses to respond to this, once they’re outside, by casually saying sayonara and then punching him in the face and running away when he objects (and grabs her arm). This strikes me as a really stupid thing to do with someone you’ve just seen act extremely powerful and lowers my estimation of her after my previous lukewarm response. Especially since the only reason she gets away from him is because the Brothers bust out through the same door at that moment and grab Jack.

Talking ensues in which Jack explains that he left Derek alive and that he found Derek after doing research and experimenting with his powers – he can travel between worlds, but he can’t navigate very well. They both traveled to Grody Alt-SPN World, where Jack saw Mary being tortured in a sort of Iron Maiden device and yelling for help, but Derek wasn’t quite strong enough to let Jack go there and rescue her.

After Jack shows the Brothers what he saw, he and Sam have a clinical infodumpy conversation in the background while a shocked Dean has his entire season’s purpose realigned – now that he knows for sure she’s alive and in trouble, he’s gonna save Mom.

Meanwhile, Kaia, a girl who supposedly has been on her own for years, promptly gets kidnapped by angels in a dodgy old station wagon while hitchhiking. [sigh] The stupid is strong with this character.

I really hate these incessant Riverdale and Dynasty commercials.

Back to Patience, who is having Yet Another Vision of Jodie (in the middle of traffic, no less) dying, and of the Brothers someplace dark. Nothing really new there, then, but it’s enough to get her off her tail and trying to contact Dean.

Over to Kaia, tied up in a warehouse and being Evil Overlord Monologued by the angels about how they tortured and killed Derek (lest the Brothers get involved because surely, that wouldn’t alert Sam and Dean – oh, wait), that he’s the son of Lucifer, and that they’re using Kaia as bait.

Driving this home (literally, in fact), the Brothers are in the Impala with Jack in the backseat, trying to find Kaia. Dean is now obsessed with rescuing Mary and says that Sam was right. Sam at least has enough motherwit to admit that he was willing to bust open worlds on “hope” rather than certainty, but they’re both on the same page about going to get her.

Jack … is moping that they thought he killed Derek. Even though his incidental and accidental body count is actually rather high. Am quite tired of this. Suck it up, Jack. You’re a killer. Move on.

Sam starts to waffle, but Dean cuts straight to the point – they thought Jack went to find Lucifer. Jack protests that Lucifer means nothing to him and that TFW are his family (Dean agrees, including Mary in the circle). Watch out for those foreshadowing anvils, folks. They’re awfully dense this season.

Welp, the plot still needs to move along. Jack gets a message through Angel Radio that they have Kaia.

Chez Patience, she’s packing and leaving. Her dad, rather than leave the door open, gives her the John speech and tells her not to come back if she leaves because reasons. Ugh. What is it with the writing this week? So formulaic and nonsensical.

Meanwhile, Kaia is giving a rather boring speech to the woman angel about how she’s not good bait. She’s not a blonde white girl and no one will come for her because “I don’t matter.” The angel agrees with her, but says that the Winchesters think she matters, so they’ll come, the angels will kill them, and the angels will kill Jack. Because that’s worked out so well for them so far.

The Brothers and Jack show up, having grabbed the male angel. To get the ball rolling, the male angel improbably gets loose from Dean and there’s a fight. Jack, in excruciatingly slow motion (that’s a really dull effect, Show. Just saying), tosses the woman angel through a glass window, then forces the male angel, who is trying to stab Dean (Sam got knocked out, or something), to stab himself. Meanwhile, the woman angel somehow gets away.

So, Maia, inexplicably, doesn’t respond especially well to any of this. She actually wants to run off again (because that worked out so well for *her*) and calls them all “insane.”

Sam then goes the Savior route, saying that Kaia can help them save Mary. Kaia doesn’t want to help them, even though (as Dean points out to her) they just saved her life. Kaia is really bad at this whole reciprocity thing.

Kaia then tries the Pity route, saying that she only ever goes to one place in her dreams – The Bad Place (this is an obvious, but very spoilery reference to a certain current show). She says she comes back with scars and she doesn’t want to help them.

Dean (a guy who has seen and done far, far worse things than Kaia could even imagine) does what the audience wanted him to do all along – pulls out his gun, and tells her to get in the car. I cheer a little because as much as the show wants me to sympathize with Kaia, she’s irritating the hell out of me with her “Me, first” whining.

Anyhoo, in the car, Sam tries to talk to Dean about this new obsession of his and Dean shuts him down with Hey, you said you wanted Mom back, too. In the back, Jack asks Kaia to let him show her what he and Derek say. She reluctantly agrees and then has her world rocked.

But before we can find out if she’s on board with all this, yet, or not, the Impala nearly gets sideswiped by the old station wagon. It’s the surviving angel. A car chase ensues.

The Impala arrives at a rotting old barge on a dock for some random reason. Dean gets out and opens the trunk for a bag. He tosses it at the others and tells them to get on the boat while he plays rearguard.

The angel arrives in her, uh, station wagon.

She gets out and reiterates her intent to get Jack so he can make new babies for angels (mind you, the angels still have no plan how to deal with Jack and his powers – like, at all). Then reinforcements show up. In other crappy cars.

Dean bails and runs into the boat. The Brothers make angel sigils and the angels start blasting them from the outside. Kaia finally steps up and says she can help Jack send the four of them to another world.

So, Jack and Kaia go to the Bad Place and Jack starts showing her how to go somewhere else. He sees other worlds, then Grody Alt-SPN World and Mary. Dean yells at Jack to hurry up, but Kaia is losing the direction. She screams as her face glows. The angels are all blasted to dust and all four of TFW 2.0 vanish, leaving behind a glowing rift (I’m sure this won’t create any future problems).

Muting the Riverdale ad because ugh.

At her house, Jody is calling Sam and leaving him a message to call her. She’s worried. The doorbell rings and it’s Patience. Patience says she “had a vision,” but rather than tell Jody what it is (that Jody died. Again), she just says that “something bad is coming.”

Pan over the rotting barge (apparently, the angels are really dead) to a roadside in daytime, with Kaia lying unconscious. Then we see Mary in her cage in Grody Alt-SPN World looking down at Jack waking up on the floor. Then Dean and Sam wake up in The Bad Place and walk (unknowingly) through a Godzilla footprint while something large screeches and stomps in the near distance.

Credits. Obviously.

Like this column? You can help keep it going by contributing monthly via Patreon (which includes perks), making a one-time donation through Paypal, or buying us a coffee.

We need your help!

My collected recaps and reviews of season one, which first appeared on Innsmouth Free Press, are now up (with a few extras) on Kindle. The Kindle version is available through Amazon. The print version is also up, though the cover’s needing a little tweaking right now. I’ve ordered a copy for a final galley proof to make any changes that don’t show up online (KDP doesn’t let you do that before the book goes live because KDP works for Satan).

My live recap for episode 13.07 is up. I will be doing the next one at 8pm Friday (tomorrow) night, EST. During the Christmas Hellatus (which starts after tonight), I’ll be catching up on my reviews for this season.

Alexander Calvert gave a brief interview about how the question of whether or not Jack is evil or good will be (temporarily) answered tonight. [Sigh] I am so over this stupid storyline. The final Wayward Sister, Kaia, will be introduced this week (she looks pretty dire). There’s also a cliffhanger. I know. I was shocked, too.

There are some photos up from the backdoor pilot for the spin-off, “Wayward Sisters” (13.10).

For some odd reason, there was a flurry of casting and character return news last Friday. The biggest is that Danneel Ackles, Jensen Ackles’ wife, has been cast in a recurring role starting with episode 13.13. Fandom predictably imploded over this, since the poor woman has been the target of much resentment from the more overly invested saltgunners for years. Personally, I liked her in Ten-Inch Hero and think she had good on-screen chemistry with her then-future-husband. Also, making it a family affair means her husband still seems invested in the show and settling in for more of the long haul. This makes it good news for the show getting a few more seasons. So, I’m looking forward to it. My only big concern about it is that the character is being created by the Nepotism Duo, but I guess we’ll see.

In other news, Ruth Connell was spotted on-set recently in costume, confirming rumors that Rowena will be back in 13.12.

Warner Bros has announced details about the upcoming Wayward Sisters spin-off. As we already know, it will star Kim Rhodes (Jody Mills) and the rumor that Briana Buckmaster (Donna Hanscum) is in it was confirmed. Also starring will be Kathryn Newton (Claire Novak) and Alex Jones (Katherine Ramdeen), as well as new character Patience Turner (played by Clark Backo). Another new character, Kaia (Yadira Guevar-Prip), has been added to the main cast list. Kaia’s “gift” will be the ability to spirit travel.

The spin-off premise and new characters will be introduced via several episodes in season 13. Patience will be introduced in “Patience” (13.03), which also brings back season one character Missouri Moseley (who is Patience’s estranged grandmother and from whom Patience has inherited her psychic gift). The actual backdoor pilot will be “Wayward Sisters” (13.10).

Star Kim Rhodes told EW that there’s a good in-SPNverse reason why the show will be set in a single location (Sioux Falls) instead of moving around. Rhymes with “Hellmouth,” I’ll bet.

The count for Supernatural calendars for 2018 is now five: a charity calendar called If I Could Tell You: The Women of Supernaturalthat still has a few left from its campaign (I got it today; it’s quite nice and sturdy, despite the post office’s attempts to crumple it into a rolled-up ball in my mailbox), two large calendars out on July 1, two mini calendars on September 1, and a Creation Entertainment calendar that comes out on December 1.

The show’s ratings last week rose again from the zombie turkey apocalypse of Thanksgiving to a 0.6/2 and 1.73 million in audience. The show (got a 0.537 in the overnights and half-hours of 0.573 and 0.502, respectively.

No ratings news for the previous week, but Thanksgiving Week had a huge leap for Live+7, with “War of the Worlds” (13.07) rising a whopping 167% in demo to a 0.8 and 98% from 1.241 to 2.452 million in audience (Arrow had a similar rise, though its audience remained below Supernatural. Still a bit anemic for the show’s usual delayed numbers but quite respectable for the CW, especially over a holiday weekend.

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Sorry about the big delay, but I had a book event last night and lots of errands today. FYI, The Supernatural Codex: Season 1, my collection of recaps and reviews from Innsmouth Free Press (plus some extras) is out on Kindle and will very soon be out in print, too. Check it out.

Anyhoo, we start off with a standard, no-rock recap of the season so far.

Cut to Now in Cambridge, England, at “7:45 pm on a Friday.” A young woman with a red suit jacket and a smug smile enters the Cambridge Museum (there are several, but the show doesn’t say which one this is) and goes down to one of the archival labs, where she enters by busting in the door (after the key card number doesn’t work). She extracts two leafs of manuscript (looks like Greek) after examining them and puts them in her alligator skin (faux?) satchel.

It’s at that point she’s rousted by a puzzled guard. She then opens her mouth and out smokes a demon. As she calmly collapses, it immediately goes into the hapless guard, who goes outside into the alley and meets up with a man in a nice suit and coat. The demon gives the man the satchel, wondering aloud how Asmodeus will reward them. The man responds by killing the demon and the poor guard he’s wearing with an angel blade.

Then the man gets on the phone and calls one Dean Winchester. He tells Dean he has something Dean might like.

Cue title cards.

Cut to Dean cleaning a gun, which never fails to be hot. Sam comes in and suggests the gun is plenty clean, indicating that something is on Dean’s mind. Sam hasn’t been able to find either Ketch or Kevin – sorry, Jack. This missing persons are what’s on Dean’s mind.

The phone rings. It’s Teaser Killer Guy making his Teaser Call. He wants to talk about Jack having gone off on his own. Sam quickly susses out and sotta voce’s to Dean that it’s a demon. Dean rolls his eyes at Sam. Since when are these things not about demons, Sam?

The demon gives them a time and address of a cafe (a public place) and the Brothers discuss the wisdom of coming as they head there. Sam thinks it’s worth a shot. Dean figures it’s risky. They’re probably both right.

Dean says that since Crowley died, he’s “sworn off demons.” It’s just not worth it and dealing with them never ends well. Sam suggests that they at least “hear him out,” to which Dean replies, “all right, and then we kill him.”

Inside, they find a guy who looks like Crowley-lite and head over to his table. Cue the sneak peek. The demon introduces himself as “Barthamus – Bart’s fine.”

Bart: The Famous Winchesters.
Dean: Some Random Demon.

Bart and Dean exchange banter, then Bart gives them one of the manuscript leaves. He says it’s half of a finding spell for a Naphil and also tries to bribe Dean with pie. Sam asks him what he’s about. Bart says he became the new head CRD after Crowley became King of Hell (a hint that the CRD we saw in season two really was Crowley). He says he wants to do a deal with the Brothers (not their souls) for the other manuscript leaf. Dean points out that the Brothers generally just kill demons like Bart, so Bart calls Sam “the smart one” and suggests he have a look at the manuscript to see if it’s real. Then he leaves. I’m a bit weary of demons calling Dean stupid, especially when Dean is calling them out on their game. Calling Sam the smarter brother doesn’t make Sam look good, either, considering the number of times a demon did that to butter up Sam’s ego (at least Sam doesn’t seem to fall for it this time). It feels more like a lazy writer insert than organic.

Anyhoo, Sam is a little shocked when Dean just goes ahead and eats the pie.

Cut to Sam finishing up his analysis and Dean asking him how it went. Sam is surprised to say that it went pretty well. He says it’s Ancient Hittite and that it appears that King Solomon created it so that he could “stalk his girlfriend” (as Dean put it), the Queen of Sheba, who turns out to have been a naphil. Dean points out that dealings with demons never go well with them.

Sam then says that this is true, but that Jack is out there and he needs them. And they ought to take the risk on his behalf (damn, Sam, I actually bought that and I’m not even missing Jack very much), so Dean agrees.

Bart is waiting in what looks like Oliver Queen’s office-dungeon (but with windows), with two nervous associates. He assures them the Brothers will be there. When Sam and Dean arrive, Bart introduces the two as Smash (a safe cracker) and Grab (a demon who is an expert on “supernatural security”).

Dean perks up when he realizes this is a heist. Didn’t know the Brothers quite as well as you thought, eh, Bart? Should’ve led with that.

The target is a man named Luther Shrike. He collects “rare supernatural objects,” as well as something that Bart owns. Bart admits that he can’t get in himself because he needs the blood of a person who has been to Hell and back – literally. Then he pointedly looks at Dean. I could have sworn Sam had been there, too (not just in the Cage, which isn’t the Pit – what Bart may really have meant – but in the execrable “Taxi Driver”), but this is straight-up ignored in favor of targeting Dean and our seeing some flashbacks to Dean’s time there.

Dean says fine, take some blood, but Bart says that he actually needs it still inside Dean. But he also needs the Brothers’ expertise at handling “curve balls.”

Sam’s the one who says no when Bart won’t say what the object is he’s looking for. Bart saying Luther is human, but a very bad man, doesn’t budge the Winchesters on the subject. But Bart says he’ll give Asmodeus the spell if they won’t cooperate, which brings Sam up short.

The Brothers go off to consult. Dean says a double-cross from Bart is a sure thing. Sam agrees, but says they need to play along to keep the spell out of Asmodeus’ hands. And then, once they get it, they’ll double-cross Bart first and kill him. Dean likes that plan, so they come back and agree to Bart’s terms.

Bart’s positively gleeful about the plan, saying Luther will never see them coming.

Cut to Luther hearing that Bart is coming from a demon minion of Asmodeus. The demon asks that Luther give Asmodeus a heads-up once Bart & Co. show up. Luther responds by leading the demon into a devil’s trap and exorcising it, saying he doesn’t need a demon’s help to defend his own house.

Cut to outside Luther’s house as the Brothers arrive. Sam is driving and tells the gate security camera he’s there about an artifact he’d emailed Luther about (and giving a false name).

Dean is hiding in the back of the Impala with Smash under a blanket. Dean’s head is down by her feet. This precipitates a crack based on the famous line near the end of Ocean’s 11 (“Ted Nugent called. He wants his shirt back”): “Hey, Winona, the 90s called. They want their shoes back.”

Anyhoo, Sam is allowed in and drives up the crappy dirt road a bit before stopping and saying “Clear.” Out gets a nervous Smash and a calm Dean. The Brothers exchange a quick “Don’t get dead” then Dean and Smash disappear into the woods to the sound of thunder and rain while Sam drives up to the house. He rings the bell and the door opens on a foyer with a devil’s trap. Luther calls from another room and Sam enters it.

Dean and Smash go into a shed where Dean makes a spell in the dirt. While she waits, Smash drinks from a can. Dean recognizes it as an energy drink (“Nerve Damage”) he used to practically live on as a kid and gets nostalgic. They bond a little when she offers him a can, but she gets grumpy again when he probes her reasons for working for Bart.

Dean finishes the spell, which is to summon in Grab. Grab admits that he doesn’t know where the vault they’re looking for is, but Dean’s blood will lead them to it. Grab then says a spell in Latin (basically, it says, “Infernal blood, show the way”). Nothing happens at first, but then Dean’s flashlight hand gets a mind of its own and drags him after it. Smash and Grab follow.

Inside, Luther offers Sam some homemade gin, which Sam downs with a grimace. Luther shows Sam a basilisk’s fang (a test, maybe?), but Sam says it’s actually a gorgon’s tooth (that basilisk fangs are hollow). Sam says he’d love to see more of Luther’s collection, but Luther just wants to stick to business.

So, Sam shows him the artifact he brought. It’s Ruby’s spork.

Outside, Dean is leading Grab and Smash through a sort of park. They arrive at a cellar door with no lock. As Dean puts it, no lock is “never a good sign.” With a grumpy sigh, Smash opens up the door, but Grab won’t go in. Dean and Smash have to go in without him. Inside, there’s a door with a lion’s head on it. Smash tells him he has to put his hand in the lion’s mouth.

Upstairs, Luther is on to Sam and says he’s with Bart. For a practiced liar, Sam sure does stutter. But Bart has it wrong that Sam is a demon and goes after him with the Spork. Luther gets a shotgun and Sam goes for the Spork, but when he stabs Luther, Luther doesn’t die. Oops. Luther knocks him out.

Downstairs, Dean is dithering over sticking his hand in. Once he finally does it, a mechanism grabs his hand and gets a drop of blood. The door opens, but when an exasperated Smash enters, Dean saves her from a poison dart. As they try to figure out what to do next, Luther stabs Grab and comes down after them.

A freaked-out Smash knees Luther and flees up the stairs. Dean puts a lot of bullets into Luther, but Luther just keeps coming, after admitting that Sam is still alive last he saw him. Sam shows up and warns Dean that Luther is immortal (well…on the property, anyway). Dean punches Luther and knocks him out.

Dean interrogates Luther, but Luther won’t talk, so Dean puts a strip of duct tape over his mouth and the Brothers put their heads together over how to get to the vault. After some babbling that he only ever watched Entrapment, and that was because he had a crush on Catherine Zeta Jones, Sam gets an idea he calls “crazy.”

“I’m good with crazy,” Dean says.

It turns out that Sam wants to put Luther’s situational immortality to their own use. They tie Luther to a chair and shove him through all the traps. He gets darted and the Brothers are able to walk in behind him. Dean is quite impressed.

Smash shows back up, after having fled out to the gate and encountered Bart, who calls her “Alice” and reminds her of her deal. The Brothers note she sold her soul. She says that as long as she does jobs for Bart, he doesn’t collect. The Brothers offer to help, but she doesn’t think they can (honey, did you forget how Dean found the vault?).

So, she cracks the safe and they get the trunk, but Luther has escaped. He comes after them in a pickup. Dean backs up and Sam shoots out Bart’s tires. Once they get him out, he tells them his story. His son was dying and he traded his soul to save him. But his son drowned a few years later, anyway. Once he got down to Hell, Luther negotiated a new deal. Oh, and he found some new leverage – he found Bart’s bones. That’s what’s in the trunk when they open it up.

His infodumping task done, Luther gets beheaded from behind by Bart. He’s off the grounds, you see.

Bart says that Luther was two centuries old and then tells the Brothers to hand over the goods. Dean’s not thrilled, but lets Sam make the decision and Sam says no, the deal’s off. Bart asks if they’re stupid and Dean says no, “We just don’t like you.”

Bart then grabs Smash and threatens to kill her. The Brothers are forced to stand by as Bart takes possession of the trunk and, for added cruelty, insists Smash get in with it. But as she approaches the trunk, she sees that Dean has dropped his lighter in there. She picks it up and lights up Bart’s bones before he can react. Unfortunately, though Sam is able to go after the other half of the spell when Bart drops it, it burns before he can put it out (you just stomp the fire out – oh, never mind).

So, the Brothers see Smash – sorry, Alice – off on a bus, after she thanks Dean for saving her life and soul. Dean tells her to “stay weird” (he called her that earlier) and she sticks her tongue out at him.

Back at the Bunker, Sam is depressed that they lost the second half of the spell. Dean says that at least they saved someone and that they will find another way. Well … also, they kept the entire spell out of Asmodeus’ hands and didn’t Bart say he made copies? But that doesn’t get mentioned.

Anyhoo, they clink glasses over it.

Credits.

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Paula’s collected recaps and reviews of season one, which first appeared on Innsmouth Free Press, are now up (with a few extras) on Kindle as The Supernatural Codex: Season 1, with the print version to be available in the next few days. The Kindle version is currently free through December 1 on Amazon.

The show goes on Christmas Hellatus after the December 7 episode will return on January 18 with the Wayward Sisters backdoor pilot.

My live recap for episode 13.07 is up. I will be doing the next one at 8pm Friday (tomorrow) night, EST.

Apologies for getting behind on my reviews. I have been busy preparing two books for publication before Christmas, a cookbook my mom created years ago of recipes from various members of our family and the long-promised collection of Supernatural: Season One reviews. Both will come out in Kindle and print.

Warner Bros has announced details about the upcoming Wayward Sisters spin-off. As we already know, it will star Kim Rhodes (Jody Mills) and the rumor that Briana Buckmaster (Donna Hanscum) is in it was confirmed. Also starring will be Kathryn Newton (Claire Novak) and Alex Jones (Katherine Ramdeen), as well as new character Patience Turner (played by Clark Backo). Another new character, Kaia (Yadira Guevar-Prip), has been added to the main cast list. Kaia’s “gift” will be the ability to spirit travel.

The spin-off premise and new characters will be introduced via several episodes in season 13. Patience will be introduced in “Patience” (13.03), which also brings back season one character Missouri Moseley (who is Patience’s estranged grandmother and from whom Patience has inherited her psychic gift). The actual backdoor pilot will be “Wayward Sisters” (13.10).

Star Kim Rhodes told EW that there’s a good in-SPNverse reason why the show will be set in a single location (Sioux Falls) instead of moving around. Rhymes with “Hellmouth,” I’ll bet.

The show’s ratings last week were predictably awful. It got a 0.3/1 and 1.24 million in audience, easily an all-time low for an original episode. If it makes anybody feel any better, Arrow did even worse. The show (got a 0.334 in the overnight and half-hours of 0.347 and 0.321.

Ratings news was rosier for Live+7, where “Advanced Thanatology” (13.05) rose from 1.706 to 2.707 million in audience.

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So, let’s get started. Keeping my expectations low, since it’s the Nepotism Duo, we’ve got Colonel Sanders again, and the episode got a series low of 0.3/1 and 1.21 million. And yeah, Arrow did even worse, and it was Thanksgiving, and they were also up against football, but still. It’s not as though fandom is identifying this as a lost masterpiece, either.

Recap of Lucifer getting owned by Mary and alt-Michael, Asmodeus’ extremely tedious search for Jack, and Jack’s stupid decision at the end of last week.

Cut to Lucifer in prison, whinging a lot more (this time to alt-Michael) about Chuck. Turns out alt-Michael can interrogate Lucifer and also torture him. Which he does. Whatever. This show sure loves its torture scenes.

Cue title cards.

Cue the sneak peek, where Dean asks Sam about his search for Jack and Sam infodumps that Jack has vanished. Castiel comes in and says he must go find him and he’s got a contact to see if Jack has been captured by anyone naughty. When Dean offers to come along, Castiel basically admits his contact is an angel, so that’s a no-go. Dean then tells Castiel not to do anything stupid, which pretty much guarantees Castiel will end up doing something spectacularly stupid. It’s almost as if I’ve been watching this show for over a decade now.

In the midst of this, Dean decides to check out a case of witches being ritually murdered. Because reasons.

Cut to Asmodeus. All I can say is I hope this scene will be very short.

Anyhoo, Colonel Sanders is calling psychically to Jack, with no success. A demon interrupts him to say they can’t find Jack, either, and they have a “Hunter on the payroll” (really? Only one? The Nep Duo sure forget canon awful fast), who says the Brothers don’t have him, either. CS whines a bit about how Jack can hide when he has so much power (it’s because he’s a walking plot device, dummy). Lots of whining in this episode.

Cut to the alt-world, where alt-Michael is apparently dissatisfied with the barren rock he’s turned Earth into, even though that was the whole plan in the first place. Welp, color me confused on that one.

So, he interrogates Lucifer a bit about our “nicer” planet, which he wants to visit and rule (and, presumably, ruin, too) and then he calls in alt-Kevin (yes, Kevin’s alive in this reality). Kevin has found a spell in the Angel Tablets (there was only one Angel Tablet, you morons) to cross over to other realities, but it requires archangel grace. So, of course Michael takes some of Lucifer’s. Because that’s a thing now.

Not at all impressed by alt-Michael so far and this entire alternate realities storyline continues to be a hot, hot mess.

Back to the Brothers (finally), who are on the dead witch case. Dean has already figured it’s not Hunters. Sam has found some CCTV footage near the time when the last witch was kidnapped and killed, and Dean spots someone on the monitor who looks familiar – it’s Ketch. With a beard.

CW, you need to just go away with these endless Riverdale ads. They actually make me want to watch that show even less.

While the Brothers argue (in broad daylight) over how Ketch can be alive and why he would be killing witches, they’re approached by a woman named Daniela, who is a witch and (obviously) knows who they are. Sam is actually handed the Idiot Ball long enough to ask how she knows. Sam, come on, really?

Anyhoo, she figures they may not like witches, but they do help people and boy, does she need help.

Back in Stupid Alt-World, Kevin is cooking up the crossover spell, while Lucifer and his guards look on. Lucifer actually tries to talk Kevin out of it by saying it’s evil. Alt-Kevin, to his credit, calls Lucifer out on the hypocrisy of that, but then kinda spoils it by saying alt-Michael will take him to “Paradise World.”

So, anyhoo, the spell works fine, but it only works for one person (as alt-Kevin tells alt-Michael after Lucifer breaks free and escapes through it). Alt-Michael tells Kevin to fix it. Also, Mary is apparently still trapped there. Yay.

Lucifer lands back in our world, but he’s mistaken for a crazy homeless person because he now has no powers.

If you think that’s excruciatingly lame, wait until you check out the next scene where Colonel Sanders is interrogating a motel clerk who had the misfortune of checking in the Brothers and Jack one day recently, then senses something. He says it’s not Jack, so it must be Lucifer’s return through the portal.

Lord, this episode is really quite bad.

Cut to a creepy house in the middle of the woods, a “safe house” where Daniela has taken the Brothers. She shows them scars and says she was caught by the “serial killer” who has been hunting witches. Sam gets her to identify Ketch as the one. She says she managed to get free and disable him temporarily with a spell.

Sam asks her what Ketch wanted. She says he’s looking for Rowena. Dean notes that Rowena is dead. Daniela agrees and says that’s what everyone is telling Ketch, hence the trail of bodies.

Daniela is fearful and says she wants to hide until it’s all over. Instead, Dean suggests they use her as bait.

Later that night, she’s sitting at a table, playing Tarot cards, when she hears a noise and then a smoke bomb crashes through the grate and she passes out. A figure in a gas mask bursts in and shoots up the place, but as he turns around, he gets dart-gunned by Dean. The Brothers come in from outside. As Sam helps Daniela out the door, Dean pulls off the intruder’s mask. Yup. It’s Ketch.

I don’t really see the point of having killed off a bunch of characters last season, only to bring them back. And I sure didn’t miss Ketch.

As Dean interrogates him, Ketch claims not to be Ketch. He doesn’t have his old tattoo and he claims he’d never get one. I roll my eyes pretty hard. Please tell me, Show, that you’re not going to dumb down the Brothers so much that they buy this even a little.

At least somewhat to their credit, they laugh outright at Ketch’s claim that his name is Alexander and they’ve mistaken him for his psycho brother Arthur (how this is supposed to explain his attempt on Daniela’s life I really don’t know).

Anyhoo, Ketch claims he chickened out of the LoL “initiation” and ran off to become a Hunter-for-hire. He’s just killing witches because they’re bad and doesn’t really have a good reason for looking up Rowena except that she’s a witch.

It’s like these two writers don’t even try, anymore. If they ever did.

So, Sam finds a paper trail that looks pretty convincing, but then, the Brothers have pretty convincing paper trails, too. Dean is unconvinced. The writers get in a little dig at the Brothers being *really* stupid by having Sam say they dumped the body rather than burned it (which would make it very hard for him to resurrect). They would never just dump the body. They *always* salt and burn.

Anyhoo, Dean is not buying it at all. I’m so proud of you, Dean.

Ketch continues to work on Sam, who is the one who is buying this a tiny bit. Sam says some nasty things about “Arthur,” which provokes “Alexander” to defend “Arthur.” Uh-huh. Sure, Ketch.

Via his Alexander persona, Ketch claims to “regret” some of what he did to the Winchester family. He’s lucky he’s talking to Sam. Dean wouldn’t care.

Meanwhile, Castiel is meeting with his contact, Duma, who predictably betrays him to the other angels. Seems they have this daft plan to capture Jack and force him to make new angels, since none have been made “since the dawn of time.” Yeah, let’s totally forget that bit where Castiel is only about half a billion years old.

Anyhoo, there’s a fight and it’s broken up by Lucifer. Lucifer does red-glowy eyes and the angels flee before they see that Lucifer doesn’t have his full powers.

After exchanging Cliff’s Notes on why each is not dead/in another dimension, Lucifer forestalls Castiel stabbing him by explaining that WE ARE ALL IN DANGER. AND IT’S NOT ME THIS TIME.

Over beers in a bar (I’m not kidding; that’s the least-daft thing about this whole episode), Lucifer explains that alt-Michael is much more powerful than his brother in this reality. Which makes no sense, but whatever. Lucifer wants Castiel to help him find Jack so they can form their own version of TFW and kick alt-Michael’s ass when he comes through the portal (which, if course, he will, because why waste any time on introducing him, otherwise?). Personally, I remain quite salty about what this show has done to this reality’s Michael, but there you go.

Castiel, to his credit, is totally unimpressed and pretty hung up on the part where Lucifer killed him the last time they met. They trade a few insults and Lucifer tries to schmooze Castiel. He keeps banging away at how God is not there.

Castiel insists he has to talk to Sam and Dean. Lucifer says they’d just put him back in the Cage. Castiel points out that’s exactly what he wants, too. Lucifer finally clues in that Castiel doesn’t know where Jack is.

Back at the Bunker, Dean gets a call from a contact he made (the motel manager whose clerk Asmodeus just wasted). He puts two-and-two together, especially since Asmodeus was stupid enough to show up personally at the motel, and comes up with Asmodeus looking for Jack.

Meanwhile, Sam is letting Ketch wander around the Bunker in manacles. Because Sam really is written that dumb this week.

Ketch keeps up with the charade. Dean doesn’t buy it. Ketch unwisely asks about Mary, but Dean refuses to give him any info.

He gets a call from Castiel, but Castiel is caught by Lucifer, who walks off with Castiel’s phone. Dean realizes something odd is going on and heads off with Sam to meet up with Castiel. Dean is unhappy about the idea of leaving Ketch locked up in the Bunker.

At the bar, Lucifer is having a hissy-fit once Castiel brings him up to speed. All he cares about is whether or not Jack is powerful, and he assumes that Jack tortured the Winchesters.

Before Castiel can set him straight, Asmodeus and his crew show up. Bleah. I am so over this guy. He just needs to die. Also, I really, really hate his henchdemons.

The Brothers enter the bar, only to find it empty and dark. The bartender has been smoked by Asmodeus, so he can’t help.

Fortunately, Asmodeus has left behind his henchdemons to take out the Winchesters, so there’s a fight (where, it must be said because there’s an important plot point here, Dean does better than Sam). One demon is about to take out Sam when Ketch shows up and kills her, while Dean takes out his last demon.

Sam is actually dumb enough to ask how Ketch got out. Dean isn’t as dumb as Sam, though, and pulls a gun on Ketch, having finally found the evidence he needs to confirm it’s really him.

Ketch admits that the whole “twin brother” thing is just his cover. He’s on the run from the LoL as a deserter and works on the downlow as a sort of enforcer in the magical world. Sam asks how he’s alive and he says Rowena was captured by the LoL once and he helped her escape in exchange for her giving him the same charm she used to resurrect. After Dean tells him Lucifer killed her (and Ketch acts skeptical), he admits that he has to recharge the “device” and tries to snow Dean a bit, which Dean doesn’t buy.

Ketch: Did it ever occur to you, Dean, that I might actually be one of the good guys?

Dean: No. Not even once.

When Ketch realizes Dean is going to kill him – again – he throws down a smoke bomb and flees, but not before Dean gets a shot at him and wounds him.

Later, Dean gets a call from “Castiel,” who claims everything is fine on his end, now. But of course it’s Asmodeus. Asmodeus then monologues to Ketch (who is working for him) that he’s keeping Lucifer and Castiel on tap for now, and that he needs “that nephilim” if he’s going to beat alt-Michael. Ketch replies, “You really needn’t worry.” Yeah, this show really didn’t need this character back and it sure as hell doesn’t need Asmodeus. What a way to reduce the impact of the original YED.

Credits.

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Putting out a column on Thanksgiving Day may seem like an exercise in futility, but we kinda have to do one, since a new episode, “War of the Worlds” (13.07), is coming out tonight. It’s a Nepotism Duo special, so it looks as though the show is burying it here for a reason. Sure, there have been some fan favorites that aired in dire slots on holidays (“Frontierland” airing on Maundy Thursday springs to mind), with predictable ratings results. But with the writing duo in question, we should probably keep our expectations low. Very low.

My live recap for episode 13.06 is up. I will be doing the next one at 8pm Friday (tomorrow) night, EST.

Apologies for getting behind on my reviews. I have been busy preparing two books for publication before Christmas, a cookbook my mom created years ago of recipes from various members of our family and the long-promised collection of Supernatural: Season One reviews. Both will come out in Kindle and print. I’m shooting for the end of Thanksgiving weekend on the Kindle version (hopefully).

For Supernatural, I’ve decided on the bridge cover for season one and the creepy room one (somewhat modified) for season two. Many thanks for everyone’s feedback. It’s much appreciated.

JACK AND KAIA DISRUPT THE WORLD – Jack (Alexander Calvert), desperate to prove to Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) that he is good and that he can control his powers, enlists the help of a dreamcatcher named Kaia (guest star Yadira Guevara-Prip) to help him find Mary Winchester (guest star Samantha Smith) and save her from the alternate universe. However, when plans go awry, the Winchester brothers are the ones who need saving. Phil Sgriccia directed the episode written by Robert Berens (#1309). Original airdate 12/7/2017.

This last episode before Christmas is the introduction for Kaia, the last of the new characters for the spin-off (the next episode will be the spin-off, which will kick off the show’s return from Christmas Hellatus in January). To be honest, it sounds pretty stupid, but Patience’s intro didn’t sound so hot on paper and she turned out okay, so fingers crossed.

Alexander Calvert (Jack) gave a brief interview about how Jack will try to redeem himself with TFW2.0 by rescuing Mary from the Hell Dimension.

Warner Bros has announced details about the upcoming Wayward Sisters spin-off. As we already know, it will star Kim Rhodes (Jody Mills) and the rumor that Briana Buckmaster (Donna Hanscum) is in it was confirmed. Also starring will be Kathryn Newton (Claire Novak) and Alex Jones (Katherine Ramdeen), as well as new character Patience Turner (played by Clark Backo). Another new character, Kaia (Yadira Guevar-Prip), has been added to the main cast list. Kaia’s “gift” will be the ability to spirit travel.

The spin-off premise and new characters will be introduced via several episodes in season 13. Patience will be introduced in “Patience” (13.03), which also brings back season one character Missouri Moseley (who is Patience’s estranged grandmother and from whom Patience has inherited her psychic gift). The actual backdoor pilot will be “Wayward Sisters” (13.10).

Star Kim Rhodes told EW that there’s a good in-SPNverse reason why the show will be set in a single location (Sioux Falls) instead of moving around. Rhymes with “Hellmouth,” I’ll bet.

We rarely get a look at how much Supernatural really makes for its studio, but this recent article opens the door wide, as does this one. It turns out show creator Eric Kripke is sueing Warner Bros for a share of the profits, citing their Hollywood Accounting for underpaying him his cut. $570 million, people – that’s how much this show made in its first eight seasons alone. And that’s what the studio is admitting to. These arbitration proceedings should turn out to be awfully interesting for us fans, but don’t expect Kripke back with the show any time soon as a result. Oddly, this slipped under the fandom radar when it first came out last week.

The show stayed at second place on the network again last week, Castiel’s return bringing a rise to a 0.7/2 (up from a 0.647 and half-hours of 0.679, 0.614 in the overnights) and 1.89 million in audience. This once again put it firmly in second place in the demo, though tying with Supergirl in audience.

No new DVR news this week for the show.

Like this column? You can help keep it going by contributing monthly via Patreon (which includes perks), making a one-time donation through Paypal, or buying us a coffee.